Tag Archives: South America

This week, I received good news from Marcos Vinícius Souza, Innovation Director (with Brazil’s Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade), and leader of the InovAtiva Brasil mentoring program for entrepreneurs. You may recall that I was in Brasil in July to lead an Everwise design workshop and to help recruit InovAtiva senior mentors.

InovAtiva selected 74 startups for the final program round who enjoyed a huge success when they presented to investors and large companies. This was considered the largest pitch session ever in Brazil. InovAtiva Brasil also just won a prize: “Best Innovation in Public Administration – 2014”. This important honor was awarded by Brazil’s National School of Public Administration/Ministry of Planning.

The conference included notable speakers, including the Honorable Mauro Vieira (Ambassador from Brazil to the USA) and Virgilio A.F. Almeida (IT Secretary, Ministry of Science, Technology of Brazil). Both the Stanford Law School and the co-sponsor Rock Center for Corporate Governance welcomed us. Big technical companies were represented by Airbnb, Uber, Evernote, YouTube, Visa, Nike, Google, and DocuSign. The entrepreneurial community had speakers from Movile, Fazedores.com, ADVANCE Medical, and SambaTech. Financial interests were discussed by BNDES, Redpoint e ventures, Valor Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Atomico, eBricks, and Silicon Valley Bank. I was not surprised to meet Lucie Newcomb (a sister TechWomen mentor) also attending the conference. It was a fascinating and worthwhile day!

I grew up in San Francisco and live in San Jose, California, two relatively-old cities – for the American west. SF was founded in 1776; SJ was founded in 1777. Both were incorporated in 1850. I have recently returned from an Everwise business trip to run a Mentoring Design Workshop in Brasilia (Brazil). Brasilia was founded in 1960 and had a population of 2.8 million in 2013. A few years ago, I worked for Huawei in Shenzhen (China). Shenzhen was founded in 1979 and had a population of 10.4 million in 2010.

Besides being new cities, Brasilia and Shenzhen have in common that their quick creation is associated with a great leader. I was last in Shenzhen in 2010, the 30th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. During that time, there was much honoring of Deng Xiaoping. Deng lead China 1978-1992. In Brasilia, we stayed at the Kubitschek Plaza hotel – whose name honors Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, Brazil’s President 1956-1961.

Both Brasilia and Shenzhen are still in a skeletal stage of civic development. That is, I saw big buildings and well-developed districts like good bones providing form and identity but also large areas of open land that were marked with actual or virtual/mental “Under Development” signs.

My son and son-in-law like to play the virtual land development game Minecraft together. Minecraft in multi-player survival mode has the concept of identification/ownership “waypoints” to mark areas someone plans to build on – even if nothing is there now. I think Brasilia and Shenzhen are full of waypoints where development is under long-term consideration. It will be fascinating to watch the flesh of mature cities grow up over the coming decades around their lovely young bones.

Ilana Robbins Gross and I were joined by Colman Lydon of Everwise this morning in Sao Paulo for our mentoring discussions with InovAtiva Brasil, Endeavor, Wenovate – and with InovAtiva stakeholders and potential mentors. I have been in meetings all day (except for half an hour to see a craft and snacks fair in the park across the street from our hotel). I am very much enjoying presenting and answering questions about mentoring. So far, the most interesting feature of Sao Paulo is the graffiti and street art. All of my photos are about groups of people meeting and eating – because that is what we are mostly doing.

Ilana Robbins Gross and I just turned in our visa applications to go to Brazil to run a mentoring program design workshop with Everwise customer InovAtiva Brasil. I am excited to be headed for my first trip to South America!

My French cousin, Catherine Minck, tells me that she and I share a family ancestor, Edouard Bolli, who was the Swiss Consul in Pernambuco (now Recife) over 150 years ago. This is my only prior connection to Brazil!